My copy arrived in the post this morning. I don't plan on starting it straight away - there's a lot of content on those discs.

I wanted to get some opinions from you guys on what to expect from this. I hear the main game can take upwards of 80 hours to finish - that's not counting the Awakening expansion and the 7 smaller DLC expansions that are part of this set!

I'm thinking of saving this until the Christmas break (I'll probably have 3-4 weeks off) and each year I have a "Christmas Game" that I spend a lot of time with.

I feel like this game is going to take a lifetime, but I've waited a long time since the original launch to pick this up - because I wanted all the content on a disc rather than having to download each item.

Some help with the following would be nice:

- Advice on a balanced class to start as (I like melee over magic, though healing spells and buffs are nice to have)- Is the DLC content really worth it?- How long will the Awakening expansion take?

That's about it really. Like I said, I have never played this game so some general tips on getting started would be great!

Honestly, just play the game however you want the first time through and don't worry about making a "good" or "effective" character. The game is easy enough (on normal) that you should be able to beat it however you like. Use your first game as a learning experience, as unless you use the wiki and extensively read up on recommended skills, you're going to make some mistakes while developing your characters.

But if you really want to know. . .

The difficulty of Dragon Age is directly proportional to how many Mages there are in battle, both on your side and on your opponents side. The game is very, very unbalanced.

I could make a strong argument about how the strongest and most versatile MC is a Mage with Blood/Spirit Healer, though admittedly, a Thief build can be good if built correctly. A good Thief is hard to build without playing the game once beforehand, though.

There are also late-game story related issues that can happen if you don't use your MC as a mage. I won't go into them, but be aware that you can have some trouble with the final battle.For one, Morrigan is a permanently gimp mage. She has Shapeshifting, which automatically cuts off your options for Blood/Spirit.You have Wynne, but she's your devoted healer and you won't have anyone doing magical damage. She is capable of Blood/Spirit though.

Either way, you're going to end up controlling your mage (MC, Wynne, or Morrigan) for most of the time anyway. I assume you're not playing on PC because you posted this in the console section, you have less options AI-wise and the AI on the mages is horrible.

I can't really answer the rest of the questions because I didn't buy any of the DLC, but I do know that the Shale DLC is probably around 2-3 hours.

You don't NEED to control a mage. Just one healing-centric mage character in your party set to 'healer' should do. I always had a pretty balanced party (warrior, 2 rogues, a mage).

I had no real trouble with the final battle, but I had multiple characters; the best thing to say is that the final boss has a few phases where he runs out of reach, and if you lack any ranged attacks, you'll need to find ballistas and fire at it. I had an archery build my last playthrough so I was able to kill it easily. I could get through both DO:A and Awakening, as well as the DLC in around 45 to 50 hours per character, and that's with doing every single quest available to me, including the fetch quests and menial tasks.

The other thing is that the game has a few bugs you can exploit for some serious game breaking potential (item duplication, infinite gold, quick level up, ability skip, etc). I made an rogue elf that had proficiency in archery AND dual weapons, so I could do pretty much anything I wanted by the end of the game. These things were never viewed as intrusive to Bioware (meaning, if you didn't actually want to do this things, there was no way you'd actually happen upon them), so they were never patched.

You don't NEED to control a mage. Just one healing-centric mage character in your party set to 'healer' should do. I always had a pretty balanced party (warrior, 2 rogues, a mage).

Oh, and perhaps I should clarify, I usually have an obsession as a min/max type in WRPGs (something I oddly don't have in many JRPGs). You can make an effective Warrior and Thief easily, but they won't be max DPS or efficiency without knowing which skills are worth it or not. I horribly butchered my first Thief's potential DPS.

Purely from an efficiency standpoint, controlling your offensive Mage is by far the easiest and fastest way to clear out large rooms of enemies.

The final battle isn't really hard and that's not what I meant in the first place. The problem is that you can completely screw yourself in the final battle though on accident without being a Mage and that's one reason I mention it.(OP I wouldn't look at this if I were you)

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Some people don't like or use Wynne, others made decisions that killed her, leaving you with Morrigan as your onlyleveled Mage. Morrigan is not as efficient as Wynne as a healer and doesn't have the longevity due to her lack of beingable to use both Blood and Spirit. The latter isn't horrible, just leaving her at second best. Still very survivable.The main problem is if you decline her offer and she leaves, you're stuck with no Mages at all. Have fun healing with items!

You don't NEED to control a mage. Just one healing-centric mage character in your party set to 'healer' should do. I always had a pretty balanced party (warrior, 2 rogues, a mage).

Oh, and perhaps I should clarify, I usually have an obsession as a min/max type in WRPGs (something I oddly don't have in many JRPGs). You can make an effective Warrior and Thief easily, but they won't be max DPS or efficiency without knowing which skills are worth it or not. I horribly butchered my first Thief's potential DPS.

Purely from an efficiency standpoint, controlling your offensive Mage is by far the easiest and fastest way to clear out large rooms of enemies.

The final battle isn't really hard and that's not what I meant in the first place. The problem is that you can completely screw yourself in the final battle though on accident without being a Mage and that's one reason I mention it.(OP I wouldn't look at this if I were you)

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Some people don't like or use Wynne, others made decisions that killed her, leaving you with Morrigan as your onlyleveled Mage. Morrigan is not as efficient as Wynne as a healer and doesn't have the longevity due to her lack of beingable to use both Blood and Spirit. The latter isn't horrible, just leaving her at second best. Still very survivable.The main problem is if you decline her offer and she leaves, you're stuck with no Mages at all. Have fun healing with items!

I think the biggest difference in JRPG and WRPGs is that in western style games it's far too easy to make a gimp character without knowing how the game plays. You almost need to know how the developers wanted you to play the game before hand if you want to be effective.

I've went ahead and moved this since my general mindset has been to put PC-geared titles in here, before being a mod I made both Oblivion and Fallout 3 topics here despite getting the 360 versions for both.

... But I'm probably going to have to look into some other solution, when the PC RPG homages become console-focused in their sequels it makes this forum seem vestigial.

EDIT: This post is irrelevant now since the thread helped goad a forum merger!